OMIC R&D applied research projects are designed to solve the metallurgy and manufacturing challenges faced by its Member companies. Applied research focuses on designing and delivering solutions to Industry 4.0 manufacturing challenges for member companies.
OMIC R&D brings together manufacturing companies and higher education in an innovation environment where “outside-in” applied research with faculty and university students solves real problems for advanced manufacturers. Our direct-to-production applied research addresses relevant problems with immediate manufacturing responses. This type of rapid response in an innovation environment that is right “on the floor” adds value and addresses problem sets in a timely manner.
As a manufacturing R&D center, OMIC is identifying and developing unique technologies and expertise that can be transferred to regional, national, and international enterprises. OMIC R&D is based on the understanding that investing in research and innovation alone is not sufficient to create a dynamic innovation-based economy; the research must be focused on helping indigenous industry increase competitiveness and be embedded in the local economy.
The OMIC R&D membership model provides a pathway for
OMIC’s annual road-mapping is a collaborative workshop where all industry and academic members initiate the process of gathering ideas based on industry pain-points and trends, and identify opportunities for research. These ideas are compartmented into OMIC R&D’s four focus areas: Additive Manufacturing, Machining, Materials & Alloys, and Robotics & Sensors.
The second phase of the workshop measures effort vs impact for each idea and includes further deliberation with supporting industry to ensure project ideas meet the criteria of General Projects (apply to many in the membership, provide shareable results, and relatable to production). After compiling industry ranking and prioritization along with research community confidence and enthusiasm, OMIC R&D works through the down-selection of the large volume of ideas to provide conceptual abstracts with special attention given to scope and scale of the potential research projects. The final abstracts are then refined refined and approved by the Tech Board and posted annual as a Request for Proposals (RFP).
Opportunities for General Research Projects are issued each February and awarded in June. See Request for Proposals
Completed and In Progress
Also called “3D Printing”, this process builds 3D objects by joining materials, added layer by layer, to make objects with digital model data from 3D modeling software. Materials used include plastic, metal powder or metal wire, wire strips, and concrete. The process speeds up prototyping and allows the creation of highly customized products. It’s used to fabricate products in aircraft, dental restorations, automobiles, medical implants and even jewelry.
Physics-based material modeling is a key area of research benefiting makers of airframes, jet engines, power generation equipment, medical devices, defense products and automotive components. Connecting alloy developers and industry manufacturers during development helps to create better structural properties, optimal microstructures, and efficient processes that result in increased performance, reduced costs, and shorter production cycles.
Strength is an important quality for metals used in industrial manufacturing, especially transportation, construction, and tool making. Metal alloys are often stronger than pure metals for four desirable factors: yield strength measures the lowest stress resulting in permanent deformation; compressive strength measures the amount of squeezing stress that will cause defects; tensile strength measures the amount of pulling stress that will cause defects.; impact strength measures the amount of impact energy that will cause a fracture. Steel, titanium, tungsten, Inconel, and their alloys are among the hardest metals.
Complex industrial processes such as steel production, aircraft assembly, and truck manufacturing use multiple layered and networked computer-controlled systems to perform operational management, monitoring, and automation for entire production lines. This “factory 4.0”, also called the “smart factory”, is the automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things, cloud computing and cognitive computing. The purpose is to optimize the operation of all the decision variables to control product quality and production efficiency while minimizing energy use, materials consumption, effluent, and carbon discharge.
Traditional manufacturing removes material from a workpiece to create the desired shape and size. Subtractive methods include milling, turning and sawing. A block of metal is modified by cutting, drilling, and milling to remove material. Advanced computer numerical control (CNC) machines rotate the block around multiple axes to make the cuts, channels, holes and other features produced by material removal. Afterward, products usually require several steps of machining and assembly before they are finished.
